The evolution of an up-and-coming neighbourhood happens in five stages.

1) A greasy take-out joint turns into an edgy, postmodern fish’n’chip brasserie, with stark benches and organic mushy peas.

2) Sequined scatter cushions and tea-light holders become available in at least three bijoux new boutiques.

3) A posh butcher and deli open, replacing the cheapo ones bankrupted 12 years ago by Somerfield. 4) You see nine sets of twins in the course of a 30-minute stroll: this does not, as my friend feared, augur the Apocalypse, but the arrival of richer, older, IVF-requiring mummies. 5) Just when you’ve bored your friends about the gastropub, cheese shop, the Saturday street market selling five quid organic olive bread, the “villagey” feel, the “ironic” old-fashioned sweet shop where penny chews cost 23p . . . meanwhile, over at corporate HQ your incipiently groovy ’hood has triggered a flashing green light. Caffè bloody Nero opens. And then a huge swath of high street is covered in builder’s hoardings. “Please, please let it be an M&S food hall!” pants your disloyal heart.

Six months later the covers come off. So what is this treble-fronted glass-plate emporium? The gargantuan Gaggia coffee maker, steel fridges stacked with Perrier and funky Italian furniture suggest a swanky bar. But no, oh God, it’s a “café-style” Foxtons.

So it’s all over then, in these parts, for the young couples with first babies, the teachers or PAs or junior doctors. They had better wonder if they need that second bedroom or prepare to commute from Kent. Foxtons are here to drive up house prices, it’s their avowed intent: their founder Jon Hunt, who this year sold up and pocketed £370 million, liked to talk of “going to war” for his sellers. Foxtons takes a bigger commission than any other agent to flog your house – 2.5 per compared with an average of 1.5 per cent – which it justifies by promising to wring from a buyer the highest possible price.

So they will be raising their chilled Peroni beer at Foxtons to George Osborne’s pledge this week to exempt most first-time buyers from stamp duty. Aha! you have an extra £2,000 in your budget? Well, let’s ratchet up that no-garden maisonette (which you can barely afford) just that little bit more.

On Saturday morning Foxtons foxstrels are handing balloons out to babies with the legend “0 per cent”. Already, their one-time-only start-up offer to flog your house for free has vacuumed up whole chunks of the neighbourhood: they have 250 houses on their books and counting. Their message to all the long-standing estate agents is “you’re dead, look upon our coffee shop and despair”.

“I’ll have a property list and a regular cappuccino,” I say to the estate agent/barista behind the front desk.

“Ah,” says the good-natured, signet-ring-wearing fool. “Not sure how to work this thing.” He fiddles about, scattering Illy grinds, and ten minutes later appears with a cup.

“That’s very good,” I say. “If all else fails you could get a job at Caffè Nero.” He gives me a rather melancholic smile.

Perhaps he was thinking that over the road he might be better paid. When I ask a sales agent why I should sign with Foxtons, he says, straight out: “Because we only pay our negotiators £10,000 a year. They can’t live on that. So you can be sure they’ll work their arses off to get you the best price.” How depressing that these kids could earn – if you take into account their 12-hour-day, six-day weeks – well below the minimum wage.

A BBC Whistleblower documentary last year, in which a reporter went undercover into a Foxtons branch, found underperformers were heckled, the office atmosphere cutthroat as negotiators delighted in gazumping each other to bag a sale. No wonder Foxtons employees have been driven to rip down rivals’ boards or erect their own unbidden. But is a recasting of Glengarry Glen Ross in South London really to anyone else’s advantage?

My husband, who grew up in this area, noted a fourbed house on a so-so street, which once belonged to his schoolfriend – a taxi-driver’s son – on sale for £1.4 million. Even under Mr Osborne’s proposed new allowances, the heirs of this fairly ordinary home would pay a fair wad to the Treasury. Do they too have the right to be outraged that such legacies, such great dynastic sums, won’t be received intact?

It was a masterstroke by the Tories to reject the dogwhistle of immigration for the great bugle horn of property paranoia, the chief angst of our age. Yes, how will our children ever get on the housing ladder, poor things? Well, not by lopping off a couple of grand from their tax bills. So red in tooth and claw, so unregulated is the housing market, it will only disappear down Foxtons’ gaping maw.

And not by awarding our children humungous sums after our deaths. Why will they need a million quid then? They’ll be what, 40, 50, even 60 years old themselves? It is young folk of 23 who need help with a deposit. Which is when parents wealthy enough to do so release a bit of equity in their homes or dig out some savings to help them get started. Which in turn lessens their likelihood of paying death duties.

“You can’t take it with you!” was the cheery preface to a senior spending spree. But that is now exactly what we want to do. This inheritance tax obsession is not about our children, it is about us, our greed, our revelling in our luck; amid a climate of such rapacious consumerism we now fixate on what we own even into the grave. And for this tax break Mr Osborne will have to find £3 billion, not all from nondoms I’d bet – on Question Time he displayed the worried uncertainty of a man who’d done his figures on the back of an envelope – but from those who cannot rely on massive unearned lump sums in middle age.

So Foxtons will make my house worth more. But bang goes the neighbourhood. All the useful shops, the hardware store, the glazier, will go. Chains will suck money from local firms to head offices. The shops will get poncier, the staff will get Notting Hill attitude, like the waitresses in the prissy new tea salon. All I can suggest is that everyone troop into Foxtons every day for coffee. Let’s put them and Caffè Nero out of business in one double shot.

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